Old Bard
by Matt Paley
Adolfas Mekas (September 30, 1925 – May 31, 2011)
Adolfas Mekas died yesterday, at 85. It’s easily to speak about what the film world –and the avant-garde in particular – has lost: co-founder of the seminal magazine Film Culture and NYC’s Anthology Film Archive (both with his older brother Jonas), the first film critic for The Village Voice, one of the great voices of the New American Cinema, a godfather of American experimental film. It’s just as easy to speak reverently about his work: his 1963 opus Hallelujah the Hills is one of the most joyous, poetic, absurd experiences you will ever have watching a movie, and I suggest you put it on your to do list. See Going Home (1971) too. But to me and many of the boys who contribute to Saint Eliot, Adolfas will always be, first and foremost, the de facto founder of Bard College’s scrappy, boisterous, anarchic Film Department, which came to be known during his tenure as “The People’s Film Department of Bard College.” It is still a department crafted in his image. His face (last I checked) still adorns the clock in the Film Office, his patron saint (St. Tula, Our Lady Of Cinema) still offers snarky aphorisms (“blame not broken equipment. Your vision may be too small to see what the broken camera sees” is a personal favorite) from forgotten corners of the film building. Ask you then where ‘Saint Eliot’ comes from? (more…)